Small events businesses want to invest in tech. Most never do. Here’s why.
“There’s often anxiety about committing to a tech investment — they end up so worried about investing that they don’t do it at all.” Alexis May, Director of Mayday Strategy
As someone who steps into small B2B event businesses as a consultant, Alexis May has become increasingly aware of the problems and anxieties that they tend to face. One anxiety he’s seeing more of is the concern over tech investment.
Most event businesses typically have two forms of tech: a CRM and event registration software. But beyond those, scepticism starts to grow, particularly from those running smaller businesses.
When buying software, its price is only part of the cost. You also have to consider time and expertise, and these things are expensive. A lot of event leaders are from a commercial background, so they make decisions with profit at the forefront. Before investing in tech, they always consider profitability and return on investment. And if they’re dealing with non-optimised tech, they’ll be resistant to making that move.
The problem is that non-optimised tech has a cost of its own. For operations teams, it means more manual work and more room for error. For marketing, it means incomplete data, weaker campaigns, and delegate targets that are harder to hit. The inefficiency doesn’t disappear because the investment wasn’t made. It just becomes invisible.
Vanessa Lovatt, founder of Event Tech World, a global community of over 600 senior event and marketing leaders sharing real experiences with technology, brings a unique perspective to this conversation. She believes that the anxiety defined by Alexis has real validity. “Yes, I do think the anxiety is justified. Tech spend is real and every cost should be scrutinised.”
When it comes to tech investment, Vanessa outlined the top priority as clarity: this looks like being able to prove that the tech you’re considering can evidence how it saves time or improves data. Another thing highlighted by Vanessa is the importance of starting small; it’s easy to get wrapped up in the world of tech, particularly when you can see competitors championing the tools they’ve adopted, but as a small business getting caught up in the bigger picture often sets you back before you’ve started. By starting small, and really flagging a particular goal to your supplier, they will be able to offer you more impactful support, and it’ll be easier to map the exact journey taken to achieve it.
And perhaps most importantly: “In fact, the smaller the business, the more you should treat your tech partners as extensions of your team.”
So, how should businesses running on a basic CRM and registration software look first? And how do you make the case for that investment when the inefficiency it would solve has never been measured?
Vanessa has encountered these questions time and time again, and her advice is refreshingly practical. “I’d look first at the biggest manual workarounds. That’s usually data entry, reporting, and fixing errors. If you can show the time lost there, the case for investment gets much easier.”
From there, she suggests working backwards from your event goals. If the priority is improving sponsorship rebook by 20%, technology that tracks attendee behaviour can provide exactly the kind of evidence that makes that conversation with a sponsor so much easier to have.
The anxiety surrounding tech investment is real, and justified. As tech continues to develop at a rapid pace, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise and feel like the right answer is to invest in everything at once. But the real value lies in getting clear on your goals, and asking yourself not “how do I catch up with everyone else?” but “how will this truly serve my business?”
Visit Jackson Barnes Recruitment’s website www.jbrecruitment.co.uk to learn more about how we connect top commercial talent with world-class media and events organisations.
About Jackson Barnes Recruitment
Jackson Barnes Recruitment delivers international recruitment solutions within the events, media, and publishing sectors. Jackson Barnes recruits Graduate to MD level in the following positions:
• Sales – delegate, sponsorship & Business Development
• Editor
We recruit for organisations in the UK and overseas, with success in London, Dubai, New York, Singapore and Australia.